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I’m okay but not great at managing my time. In addition to being an editor and writer on my radio show, I’m also the boss, and deal with budgets, personnel stuff, revenue and spending questions, and business decisions. My worst habit: when I should be writing something for this week’s show, I’ll procrastinate by looking over some contract or making some business phone call or doing something else that actually isn’t as important as writing. Which is to say: I procrastinate by working. I wonder if that’s common.

Ira Glass

At least us worker-cum-management types aren’t alone.

The interview also has a nice list of stuff he as This American Life us, including lots of Google Docs!

Think big, but have small, short, and focused meetings

Have 15 minutes be the default. Sure, sounds interesting. See also Rumsfeld’s meeting rules which opens with a more management take on what meetings are for: If you think about it, a meeting’s function is to pool an organization’s collective wisdom and knowledge in one room, making it easier for a manager to learn what his team knows that he doesn’t, and to provide guidance to all of those involved in one place at one time.
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M&A doesn't often work

[S]tudy after study puts the failure rate of mergers and acquisitions somewhere between 70% and 90%. The second, less familiar reason to acquire a company is to reinvent your business model and thereby fundamentally redirect your company. Almost nobody understands how to identify the best targets to achieve that goal, how much to pay for them, and how or whether to integrate them. Yet they are the ones most likely to confound investors and pay off spectacularly.
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Tips on scheduling meetings

I’m constantly shocked at how poor most people are ar scheduling meetings. There’s often simple things like “use the free/busy function” that you have to remind people about. Anyhow, there’s some good tips here if you’re someone who does all their meeting scheduling in plain text (read: you need help!), e.g.: Instead, when I’m setting a meeting with a single person, I write and say, “Let’s have lunch together. How about next Wednesday at Cardiac’s House of Cheese at 11:45AM?
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Seriously though… if anybody but major datamining companies are going to get remotely enthusiastic about this IoT business, two things need to happen:

The Internet, things, and you « Outguessing the machine (via iamdanw)

The incentive for businesses to keep an “internet of things you bought from us” is overwhelming. What’s in it for them to make it open?

LAN-of-Things, then.

(via fadingcity)

“LAN of things.” That’s a-LoT better!

Anything you want will happen, but sometimes it’s hard for people to see that when they’re in the middle of it. It looks like it’s incredibly complicated. Well, it’s not complicated at all. In fact, it’s so uncomplicated it’s amazing. All it is about is the work. Finally, if you do the work people will notice and you will get what you want. That’s it. It’s as simple as that.

On advertising work, but applies to anything where you create (rather than manage an organization, which is it’s own creating if done right). Also: this is sort of what coders mean when they obsesses about shipping.

A 13-year study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology has revealed that if you take naps during the day, your life is going to be short… The report, which was performed by researchers at Cambridge University, studied the habits of over 16,000 men and women in Britain and found that those who take naps during the day are almost a third more likely to die before they turn 65.

A major British study indicates daytime nappers die younger. Of course, our internal clocks are incredibly complex machines. (via explore-blog)

Man, things are rough!

A 13-year study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology has revealed that if you take naps during the day, your life is going to be short… The report, which was performed by researchers at Cambridge University, studied the habits of over 16,000 men and women in Britain and found that those who take naps during the day are almost a third more likely to die before they turn 65.

A major British study indicates daytime nappers die younger. Of course, our internal clocks are incredibly complex machines. (via explore-blog)

Man, things are rough!

Working up Twitter, and then letting it take over

I have to work myself up in the morning to Twitter, because it’s so immediate and stressful. You shouldn’t have to dive completely into it. At first I’ll scroll through, and see if there’s anything from the last half hour or so that I may have missed while I was getting myself mentally prepared for the day. Then I’m off and running. For the rest of the day, Twitter is the ruler of everything.
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